Doctor Hans Muller checks a patient in hospital.(PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
“Never leave China,” Hans Muller repeatedly told his Japanese wife before he passed away in 1994.
He need not have bothered, as the wife, Kyoko Nakamura, had also become deeply attached to their adopted homeland. Today, Nakamura, aged 91, still lives in her old house at the far end of a hutong in Beijing, continuing the family’s more than 70-year-long stay in China.
“My husband and I met and fell in love in China. Almost all my good memories are linked to China. China is my home, I won’t go anywhere,” Nakamura once said in an interview.
And she never regretted her decision, as she enjoys a good living environment amid the nation’s steady economic progress and rise to prosperity.
Coming to China when he was only 24, Muller fought side by side with the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people in the War of Resistance Against Japanese Aggression (1931-45), and later in the War of Liberation (1946-49).
Born into a Jewish family in Dusseldorf, a city on the River Rhine in western Germany, in 1915, Muller, upon finishing high school, found it difficult to stay on in Germany due to the anti-Semitism at the time. He left to continue his studies at the University of Basel, the oldest university in Switzerland, until he earned his PhD in medical science in 1939.
In the same year, World War II broke out. Half a year before his graduation, after encountering a Chinese student being detained in Switzerland for no reason, he went to question the policemen, in fury. The next day, the local police sent a notice that he had to leave Switzerland within six months.
Muller had finished writing his dissertation, but he had not made up his mind as to where to go. At first, he thought of going into medical practice in South America. Then a classmate reminded him: “If you want to participate in the anti-fascist battle, then you go to China.”
After pondering for a few days, he eventually decided to join the anti-fascist forces in China. He sold his beloved camera to raise funds for a ferry ticket that took him to the French port of Marseille, from where he transferred to Hong Kong.
At that time, he found that a batch of aid, which included an ambulance and some 600 boxes of medical items, to assist the Chinese people in the war against Japanese aggressors, needed to be transported to Yan’an in northwest China’s Shaanxi province. Following introductions to revolutionary figure Liao Chengzhi and Polish-born Chinese journalist and writer Israel Epstein, Muller was able to reach Yan’an along with the supplies.
In Yan’an, Muller met top CPC leaders, including Chairman Mao Zedong and Zhu De, then commander-in-chief of the Eighth Route Army, and joined the Eighth Route Army. He was assigned work as a surgeon at the Dr Bethune International Peace Hospital in Yan’an.
Muller in Yan’an. (PHOTO / XINHUA)
A month later, he followed an Indian medical team to the Taihang Mountains. The trip came just a few days after the death of the Canadian doctor Norman Bethune, a prominent medical expert who sacrificed his life in treating patients in China.
Muller knew that Bethune’s deeds had been widely praised by the local people, so the spirit of the internationalist medical warrior strongly influenced him and strengthened his determination to take part in Chinese people’s fight against the Japanese aggression.
During this time, he observed how the Eighth Route Army was different from the Kuomintang — they were impoverished, lacking necessities such as food, but everyone was equal, with the officers and the soldiers enjoying the same privileges; they all had high fighting spirits; and the military leaders truly cared about the people.
Although Muller did not speak Chinese at that time, he quickly found his feet in the Taihang Mountains. Late one night, some villagers hurriedly knocked on his door. Although he could not understand what they were speaking, Muller was aware that there was some kind of emergency.
He immediately gathered his medical kit and accompanied the villagers as they made their way on a donkey cart into their rural community. It turned out that a woman was in extreme physical distress as she was trying to give birth. With the help of Muller, both the mother and newborn baby were safe.
After that, word of “a foreign doctor who saves people’s lives” spread widely in the Taihang Mountains, and Muller became known as a “big-nosed doctor”, highly respected and loved by the locals.
In 1946, a Japanese nurse, Kyoko Nakamura, volunteered to join the frontier-line surgical team of the Eight Route Army. And it was where that she met her future husband Mueller who headed the team.
“I was surprised when I met Doctor Muller, for I never thought that a foreigner with blue eyes and a big nose was in the same army,” she recalled.
She later realized that Muller enjoyed the same popularity and respect as Bethune and Indian doctor Dwarkanath Kotnis who also served the Chinese people.
Nakamura and Muller fell in love with each other, and finally got married in the spring of 1949, months before New China was founded.
During the Battle of the Hundred Regiments in 1940, with an increasing number of injured soldiers, Muller and his comrades had to complete 40-50 surgical operations a day at certain times.
On countless occasions, instead of simply doing amputations for the injured to save them, Muller would kneel down on the ground for hours, just to fix bones and do operations on the soldiers, so as to save their limbs.
Hepatitis B vaccine research team of Peking University Health Science Center (Doctor Hans Muller in the middle of the back row). (PHOTO PROVIDED TO CHINA DAILY)
During an 11-year period from 1939 to 1950, the German-born doctor is estimated to have treated more than 9,000 patients in total, including some military leaders.
As the region suffered severe shortage of daily necessities due to blockade by enemy forces, there were many hardships. But doctors were often provided ‘luxury’ food, such as millet and eggs, so that they could have enough strength while at the operating tables. However, instead of enjoying the food himself, Muller would always give it to wounded soldiers.
Muller witnessed the founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949, acquired Chinese nationality in 1951, and joined the CPC six years later.
Instead of going back to Germany, he continued to work in the medical field, and dedicated himself to China’s socialist construction, while bearing witness to the country’s transformation across the board.
As medical experts, Muller and his wife took up the mission of establishing China’s first batch of medical staff after the PRC’s founding. They worked in many places, including Changchun, Shenyang, Tianjin and Beijing.
Nakamura worked as a pharmacist while Mueller served in various roles, including stints as president of the Affiliated Hospital of Changchun Military Medical University, vice-president of Beijing Medical University, and member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference.
He also made an important contribution to the country’s efforts to prevent hepatitis.
In the early 1970s, when China was in urgent need of a hepatitis B vaccine but the research was lagging behind, Muller had a chance to go to Japan as his wife Nakamura was visiting her relatives. Taking advantage of the opportunity, he studied and consulted with well-known Japanese experts.
Later, after returning to China, he devoted himself to do further research on hepatitis B vaccine with professor Tao Qimin at the Peking University Health Science Center to achieve a breakthrough in its development.
Working in a shabby 6-square-meter place separated by a warehouse, the two performed hundreds of experiments within four months’ time, but they also faced great challenges.
At that time, there were no living animals for experiments, and the vaccine had to be kept in the refrigerator. Muller got anxious. One day he said to Tao: “How do you feel about using me (as a subject for) the experiment? … I have almost lived a life, and I have enjoyed everything I should enjoy in China... Even if I die, there is no regret.”
Muller’s motivation inspired all the members of the scientific research team. On July 1, 1975, on the occasion of the anniversary of the founding of the CPC, the first batch of hepatitis B vaccine was finally made in China.
In 1989, the Ministry of Health awarded Muller the title of “Outstanding Internationalist Medical Warrior”.
“Only the CPC can save China. They are indeed putting people’s interests as their priority,” Dehua Muller, son of Hans Muller, said in an interview with Xinhua.
Dehua Muller, who grew up in Beijing, is still living in the Chinese capital, though he has acquired US citizenship for work convenience.
He said he and his family witnessed tremendous changes in China. “There have been so many earth-shattering changes around us. The technologies, people’s living standards, the transportation... all these changes were unimaginable in the past,” he said.
“The Party is capable of accomplishing whatever they are determined to do. When CPC members take the lead, it’s much easier to finish a task,” said Dehua Muller. “The Communist Party of China leads the people, and its members are at the forefront. Nothing is impossible.”
Since its founding in 1921, the CPC has attracted many foreign friends like Hans Muller during different periods of revolution, construction and reform. Their interactions with Chinese Communists over the past century have opened a window through which the world can better understand the CPC.
Xinhua and He Na in Beijing contributed to this story.
